In 2008 I was in Japan for 3 month. After returning to Germany, I thought it might be fun to go to Japan again for holiday, and being able to speak a bit - that started it all.

My language learning history

I grew up in East Germany, so learning German. In Socialist East, I was part of the last school year of pupils learning Russian as first foreign language, the language of the east block. I think it was not taught in a good way, not with focus on actively speaking and listening. We could put it into practical use though: we had pen pals in the Soviet Union, and dads of other students worked in Russia at the Druzhba pipeline. With the German unification in 1989, most students gave up on Russian learning and started with English. Me too - but just with English as minor study field, and focusing on Math and Physics. The way of teaching English was very good, by scales. The internet was still not there though, there was not much English content which could have sparked our interest outside of school.

First Japanese lesson

After my stay in Japan I decided to try learning Japanese, living in a big city like Munich made it easier to find a school class for that. In the first days of January 2009 I went to a class at the citizens university (Volkshochschule), and met a Japanese teacher to whom I’m in contact until this very day.

I will never forget the opening words: “So do you think you will be able to speak Japanese after these 5 days?” Well, not really.. but the question really made me think about this. Spoiler: even after the 17 year I don’t feel like I’m speaking it..

The teachers style was unusual: we started in listening to him saying full Japanese sentences, along with the German translation. We repeated these until our pronunciation was right. He handed out CD’s with many hours of the sentences in Japanese and German, for training. We also talked about the meaning of single words, but I think comprehension appeared just from listening many of these sentences, and “letting the brain figure it out”. We would not talk about grammar at that time.

Along with speaking and listening, we learned to write and read the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets: having learned these characters like ま (“ma”), む(“mu”), か (“ka”) or る(“ru”) we were able to write down all Japanese sentences we heard. That was also a strict rule: we write Japanese in Hiragana/Katakana or Kanji, not our Arabic letters. That helps the spelling: writing Japanese with Arabic letters leaves much room to guess the correct spelling, but with written down Hiragana/Katakana the spelling is pretty clear.

I did horrible, btw. My written characters were “not clean”, and I was bad at memorizing vocab, and bad at correct spelling. We got the CD’s for training, but as we also went for beers after the lessons, there was barely time for training.

Going to regular lessons

I made it a habit of listening to the CD’s from the teacher, at any free minute: the Nokia communicator smartphone had a good loud speaker, and already after getting up in the morning, I started to listen to the Japanese sentences. When I did not just have the toothbrush in my mouth, I would repeat them. The next sentence was then the German translation. This resembles how children learn - and they do not even have the translation in a language which they understand.

I registered for weekly lessons with the same teacher. While commuting by bike to work I would listen to the Japanese CD’s with one one ear, and repeat the Japanese. When going to the lessons on Saturday afternoon, I would do the training already while on the train. I would get off at train station “Laim”, and walk 2 hours trough the city to the citizens school - doing Japanese training all the time. Being subscribed to one lesson of the teacher, we were also free to join to his other lessons over the week - I ended up doing 2 lessons on Saturday and one on Sunday.

I still think that for spelling, starting with real lessons is best.

My online ressources over time

Right from start learned vocabulary online, via website https://iknow.jp. There are now many sites following the same idea: they introduce new Japanese vocabulary, ideally also in conjunction with a whole sentence. Once the user has memorized the vocab, the site recognizes that and will after increasing timespans bring up the vocab again. I still like the site very much, catching up with it’s vocab training is part of my daily morning routine. Just the Japanese content is limited, after learning that I’m just retaining on the site. Fun stats: I’ve studied for 1048 hours, so that’s 43 days of learning!

Then I started memrise.com, and also learning there daily for 10-15min - not just retaining but also new vocab. I’ve paid lifetime fee on both sites. Both have apps for Android, but I’m just using the browser interface.

My second important online resource: a page where you write texts in a foreign language, and get it corrected. The page introducing the idea was lang-8.com, it has vanished and https://nyan-8.com/ is an excellent replacement. Example of one of me texts there: link. I recommend the approach for multiple reasons:

• You write texts in foreign language, and get corrections by natives. You can use that for improving your writing.
• You also get comments on the contents, this has helped me many times to get impressions and alternate views on matters of daily life in Japan.
• Writing the text helps me to sort my ideas around a topic. In computer area we know this as ‘rubber duck explaining’: explaining a problem or concept to a colleague or a rubber duck helps us to grasp the problem.
• I’ve made great friends via these 2 sites. Having frequent video chats via internet with 2 of them.

As a further side affect, this has also brought me into writing blog articles, see blog.fluxcoil.net. I’ve also taken over many of my texts from lang-8/nyan-8 into my wiki.

What about writing Japanese?

Obviously, everybody is setting their own goals. For me, just writing Japanese on the computer and the mobile phone are important. On these platforms, there are also various tools available. As for reading, I mostly read texts on the computer, and have single words translated into English, via browser plugins.

Right now, I’m just writing Japanese by hand for xmas cards I’m sending out, and for training sheets from one of my Japanese teachers. Not writing Kanji by hand is also impacting reading capability though: kids in Japan have a collection of important Kanji, they write each of them many times. This is training muscle memory, and along with your writing you also improve the capability to tell the Kanji apart from each other. I would like to improve my reading without tools like browser plugins, but I was never able to force myself into these long Kanji writing sessions.

On the other hand, writing capability is also degrading with Japanese people - everybody is just using the computer and mobile phone these days.

Motivation over time

That’s the big topic. Without finding joy, you won’t stick with it. For some, obtaining badges in the language learning app is enough. I found the curve of progress important for my motivation: initially, you progress very fast. For myself, I see these mile stones:

• after a few weeks of learning: you can order a meal or a beer. And memorize a simple self introduction.
• after months, writing your name in the other language
• later, conversation about simple topics
• Then, at some point, you will be in a longer conversation where the language you are learning is the most efficient means of communication. For me, this was 2012, after 3 years of learning, at a homestay with a family in Sapporo.
• Then, giving a presentation in business context in the foreign language.
• Later, picking up a hobby not related to language - and doing the learning and exams in Japanese. I passed the Japan HAM radio license, level 4, in 2024.

These mile stones can be different for everybody. Also passing of tests can play a role here, for Japanese that’s the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT, 日本語能力試験). It has 5 levels, 5 being the easiest. Many jobs in Japan require level 2 or 1. The goals of such tests do not necessarily align with the goals of the language learner: my goal is to improve speaking/listening. Even when passing the highest JLPT level, one has not spoken a single word though: the test is focusing mostly on quick reading and understanding texts, then answering questions. Also grammar questions, and listening are important.

While I was in Germany, I passed levels 5, 4 and 3. For getting my job in Japan I had to also pass a kind of company own test, to work on a technical support issue in Japanese. Later in Japan I passed level 2, and was failing the level 1 exam. Not planning at trying it again, after I know it’s focused on fast reading.

What’s also motivating?

• Being able to read texts in the foreign language, and discovering pieces/texts which I like so much that I say “Being able to read this natively is totally worth leaning the language”. For me, one example is 雨ニモマケズ from 宮沢賢治, details in English are here Another example: 第三夜 from 夏目漱石.
• Being able to talk with people in the foreign language. Understanding the language enough to understand the differences to the mother tongue: for example, Japanese has multiple words for “to be”, depending on whether the object is living (i.e. a pet) or not living, i.e. a table. Simple enough, eh? Until you realize that Japanese sentences about gods are using the word for “living”. And the word used for robots changed recently, they are now more seen as “living”!
• Diving into the foreign culture. Japanese is so different, that you do not only learn about the many ways to show with words that the person you talk with “has a higher status”, you also learn about the cultural background. And you question how this is done in your own language.
• You discover movies in the foreign language. And books, but these need to be at the exact right level to already be readable without using to many tools, but als being interesting enough to get you hooked.

On the wiki I have references to more approaches. Find something which works for you, keeps you hooked. You won’t invest all the time without being interested.

What has language learning done for me?

The most obvious part, it enabled me to communicate to some level in Japanese. Along the learning journey, I have met many folks, with many I’m staying in contact: teachers, other students. I’ve been travelling Japan by myself, as well as with teacher and other students, had dinner with folks I would never have met by myself. I was at a really great home stay in Sapporo, this was my first “actually my Japanese is the best means of communications”-experience.

I got to like Japanese culture and Kanji, brought Japanese into my life and together with my other hobbies: text setting with Kanji, in LaTeX, works nicely. The software for Japanese input is an area by itself, and learning about Unicode and Japanese fonts is great.

What are the basics of good language learning?

That’s a subjective list of course, what works for you might not for for someone else. I myself think this is good language learning:

• Most importantly: it needs to be fun. Look at various ways of learning and consuming content in the other language. When you find a combination which works for you, stay evaluating to the left and to the right. New things get available over time, and also your level of proficiency changes and you will adopt different methods.
• Think I recognized 2 overall categories of learning strategies: a) to lern vocab and grammar like formula, and then construct sentences like a mathematician. Might work for some people, and be well suited for some languages, but I do not recommend it. It’s also like my Russian lessons were done, and English in Japanese schools. b) is rather giving the learner much content, and letting the brain “figure it out/recognize the patterns”. That’s how we pick up our mother tongue, and this works better for me - even though I’m all pro mathematics and science in all areas. :)
• Sticking to plain vocab training and apps will not work out in the long run. Get also a real course, or a tandem partner in your town or over the internet. Only this can help with pronounciation.
• Becoming proficient in the language, or passing a certain test, can be a goal for you - but it’s also totally fine to just like to learn without getting anywhere. I was told by a professional musician that “starting now with an instrument will not lead anywhere” - but actually me enjoying to make music might be more important than anybody enjoying to listen.
• Immersion helps a lot, Consume news/drama/movies/content in the language you are learning. It’s not a silver bullet though: passively listening to news in Japanese without focusing on them will not help, the brain is just filtering them out.

My current strategy

I’m in Japan since 2016, using Japanese and English at work. My Japanese will never be at the level of my colleagues, but on the other side I feel more comfortable to speak English.

• In the morning I do vocab training with iknow.jp and memrise
• Weekly lessons with a Japanese teacher, can really recommend nihongo-lesson.jp. Quite cheap, private lesson with 1 teacher for you as student, so the contents can be tailored exactly to your level.
  2000円/40min lesson. It’s apparently so cheap my employer can’t believe it and is not paying for it. :)
• Weekly video chat sessions with a friend who is learning German.
• Texts on nyan-8
• Reading tech news from gigazine.net
• podcast バイリンガルニュース

So how would you spend these 1000 hours? :)

Corrections? Questions? -> Fediverse thread